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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313654">A Beginner's Guide to Star-Forming Event Horizons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic'>midrashic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Genocide, Getting Together, M/M, Outer Space</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier is not thrilled to be on the <i>USSAS Magneto,</i> with its missions to the back-end of nowhere and its captain who is famous for having violated the Prime Directive. But appearances can be deceiving.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Cherik Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Beginner's Guide to Star-Forming Event Horizons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is not really a Star Trek AU, as I have never seen a piece of Star Trek media in my life. This is Star Trek heavily filtered through the Sparks Nevada segment of the <i>Thrilling Adventure Hour.</i> Don't @ me! I am trying my best.</p><p>The Prime Directive, as I’ve defined it for the purposes of this story, is a policy of non-interference with civilizations that have yet to develop Faster Than Light space travel: you don’t give them medicine, you don’t give them tech, you don’t go to war with them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Admiral Frost’s office is as bare and stark as her name would suggest, the plain industrial white walls unadorned with family holos or knick-knacks. There is a single metal bookshelf by the door, on which pseudoleather-bound copies of <em>The Corpsman’s Guide to Interstellar Law </em>and the Treatise of Rigel-9 are stacked. Charles shifts in his wheelchair, grateful that he doesn’t have to sit in one of the bare metal chairs in front of Frost’s desk, which are probably as uncomfortable as they look. He has bigger problems than the comfort of his ass. “Wasn’t he court-martialed last April?” Charles asks.</p><p>“He was reprieved,” Admiral Frost says boredly, “as you’d well know if you ever read the news-holos instead of getting all your gossip from seedy space dives you’re picking up sexual partners in, Xavier.”</p><p>“He broke the Prime Directive,” Charles points out, trying to keep his voice just south of shrill.</p><p>“He was,” Frost repeats, “reprieved. Extenuating circumstances.”</p><p>Admiral Frost is from the telepathic Xantherian colony, like Charles. It doesn’t make her any less of a hard-ass.</p><p>“He broke the Prime Directive and you want me to be his XO?! This is—this is career suicide, is what it is. Who did I piss off? Whose ass do I have to kiss to get out of this?”</p><p>“We want you onboard the <em>Magneto</em> not as a punishment, but as an opportunity,” Frost says.</p><p>“That’s code for punishment.”</p><p>“Not in this case. Xavier, you’re fast-tracked to a command of your own, but your previous postings have been… lacking in one important respect.” Charles bites his lip. He knows what they say about him. <em>Not a team player. Brilliant, but a condescending prick. </em>“We’re sending the <em>Magneto </em>on patrol missions, not survey or diplomatic or combat, yes. The captain is… mildly disgraced, yes. But none of that will reflect on your record.” Frost pins him to the chair with her piercing eyes. “The <em>only </em>thing that will reflect on your record is whether or not you took one for the team. Serve out this solar year, babysit the Captain and make sure he doesn’t break the Prime Directive again, and you get your command, Lieutenant Xavier. Refuse… and you still might get your command, but it won’t be under my Admiralship.”</p><p>Well. When you put it like that.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
The <em>USSAS Magneto </em>is an older model, pre-Calypsan War, with the warp mechanics still on the aft instead of the port side of the ship. The design is straight out of the 2080s, a sleek, minimalist hull, almost flattened like a disk, with the only distinguishing features that set it apart from any other of the Imperator-class cruisers the dock doors, which are utilitarian rectangles but for the way they split and blossom into two eye-shaped openings near the top. It’s very art deco.</p><p>The interior of the ship is similarly minimalist, no motivational holos floating on the walls. Charles enters the bridge and sees a set of stations that look almost as though the ship is like new—no knick-knacks, no desk toys, not even hardcopy references, which some officers like to use for the aesthetic, though of course in an emergency everyone looks up the protocol on the holoscreen. Frost would feel right at home here, Charles thinks.</p><p>Charles does not. The moment he wheels onto the bridge, everyone stops and turns to look at him, openly staring, quiet as a bridge ever gets. Charles tugs at the collar of his uniform. “Hello,” he says, but no one says it back. A skinny, thin-faced man in blue—the science officer?—ducks his head and stares fixedly at whatever it is on the holoscreen he was looking at, but that’s as much as anyone moves.</p><p>Except for the captain’s chair.</p><p>The captain stands and turns to look at him. Charles’s first impression of Erik Lehnsherr, in the flesh, is that he is <em>stunning. </em>Those cheekbones, that jawline, those clear gray-green eyes. If the Council had let him off for looks alone, Charles wouldn’t have been surprised.</p><p>The Captain’s nostrils flare. “Charles Xavier, I presume,” he says flatly.</p><p>“Yes, hello,” Charles says, determinedly cheerful. His last captain had loved him, even if the rest of the officers and ensigns hadn’t. He is determined that this captain will be no different, violater of the Prime Directive or no. “I’m XO Xavier, your new second-in-command—”</p><p>“Your jacket is unzipped,” the Captain says brusquely.</p><p>Charles glances down, stupidly, because he knows his jacket is unzipped. He’s wearing it over an argyle sweatervest, and he’d purposefully left it unzipped because looking more like a professor of Common Linguistics instead of an XO tends to put people at ease. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, it is.”</p><p>“The next time I see you, you’ll be conforming to USSA uniform policy,” the Captain says coldly. “To the letter. That means getting some boot polish, or I’ll have you temporarily relieved of command in favor of Science Officer McCoy until you can get your appearance in order.”</p><p>Charles laughs. No one else does. Slowly, he realizes that it isn’t a joke.</p><p>“You can’t be serious,” he says after a moment. Uniform regulations are a way of punishing cadets. Charles hasn’t worn a perfect uniform, accolades and all, without being on a diplomatic mission for years. “It’s hardly as though anyone else—” He cuts himself off, because everyone <em>is </em>wearing a pressed-perfect uniform on this bridge. No creases, boots gleaming, badges proudly winking on their chests.</p><p>“If your observational skills are always at this standard, I’ll be requesting a new XO,” the Captain says. Charles blotches an unattractive red. His hands curl into fists. He hasn’t felt so humiliated since he was an ensign himself. “Have you been briefed on our first mission?”</p><p><em>You mean the busywork they’re sending you on because you violated the Prime Directive? </em>Charles thinks meanly, taking care not to project. Outwardly, he straightens and says, “Yes, Captain. Patrol of Quadrant Neptune for two week-shifts.” The Captain nods jerkily. Charles almost feels a wave of pity for him—Lehnsherr was a formidable force, as far as he remembers. Like Charles, he’d been fast-tracked for promotion, and indeed he’s not much older than Charles himself. Had fought his way up through the Calypsan Wars, whereas Charles had switched from Science Track to Command Track, and for his valor received his own command.</p><p>And all of it gone in an instant.</p><p>“Cassidy, set a course,” the Captain says, settling back into the command chair. Charles, still feeling heat burning his cheeks, takes his position at the station at the Captain’s elbow. Still time to make a good first impression. He plucks the details from the Captain’s mind, and starts commanding—”Tech Officer, please ready the thrusters to 200%. Navigator, forward the course to the Captain’s holoscreen. Communications, please radio in and let them know that—”</p><p>“What the hell are you doing,” the Captain says.</p><p>Charles turns to the Captain, who is white-knuckled, gripping the armrests of the command chair so tightly it’s vibrating with rage. “Performing my duties as an XO,” he says hesitantly. Lehnsherr throws him off. He’s never felt so off-balance in his life, not even when Raven had gotten him drunker than a skunk on Academy still-absinthe and he’d fallen over three times trying to get back to his dorm.</p><p>“If you ever—<em>ever—</em>violate my mind like that again I will airdock you,” Lehnsherr says, his voice preternaturally calm. Charles almost laughs again, but there is something feral in Lehnsherr’s mind, something that tells him, again, that he’s dead serious.</p><p>“Are you—are you kidding me? I’m a Xantherian telepath. Half my usefulness to previous captains was that I didn’t need to ask for directions,” Charles says incredulously.</p><p>“I’m not,” Lehnsherr says through gritted teeth, “your previous captains. Everyone on this ship is from a mutant colony, and not a single one of them uses their powers on the rest of the crew without their consent.” Charles opens his mouth, torn between curiosity—an all-mutant, all-colony crew? <em>Fascinating, </em>why on earth would Lehnsherr select an all-mutant crew when Earth-born staff are generally preferred—and naked indignation. “Get out,” Lehnsherr says, and when Charles hesitates, looking around at the bridge—no one coming to his defense, everyone staring fixedly at their screens—Lehnsherr snarls, <em>“Get out,” </em>like a feral animal and Charles jerks backward and, like a beaten dog with his tail tucked between his legs, scrambles to get to the door. “And shine your boots,” the Captain calls after him, and Charles all but skids off of the bridge, the steel pressurized doors shutting behind him.</p><p>He stares at his reflection in the doors. What the <em>hell </em>was that?</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
This solar-year is going to be hell.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Charles shines his boots. He buttons his jacket. He doesn’t use his telepathy, although it curls up in his mind, growing increasingly rusty and offended. He is perfectly polite to the Captain, who continues to be an arsehole, but a general arsehole, not an arsehole specifically directed at him. Lehnsherr follows regulations to the letter; to every dot over every <em>i. </em>The United Solar System Alliance Starcorps isn’t exactly <em>relaxed</em>, but Charles resents being treated like a cadet again, every move scrutinized, every step corrected if even a little out of place.</p><p>But.</p><p>Lehnsherr is. A good captain.</p><p>He’s gentle with the cadets. Every new mission brief, he spends hours poring over it in his quarters, memorizing the expected risk factors; the first time Charles heard him rattle off the risk factors in a briefing, he was impressed. Not even the most devoted of his former captains had done that, and it makes him agile. Lehnsherr is decisive and flexible, he’s well-versed in engineering concepts, and.</p><p>And aside from their disastrous first meeting, he seems to respect Charles. He hasn’t yelled at him again (though it helps that Charles’s uniform is now impeccable). He’s read his file, clearly; he asks his opinion on Charles’s areas of expertise when they go to check that there are no changes in planets that have already been biologically surveyed. They don’t get to do the exciting work of logging surveys themselves, but Lehnsherr is thorough, and capable, and handsome.</p><p>Not that that has anything to do with anything.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
And then there’s the thing with the Vertles.</p><p>Their first major conflict isn’t pirates, and isn’t smugglers. The first major conflict is with a semi-sentient bouncy leafy little fist-sized species that has colonized Centauri-12. Vertles are technically an invasive species, and all ships are checked for Vertles sprouting in the greenhouses before lift-off, as even one Vertle can decimate the ecology of a delicate colony planet. And they have legs, so it’s difficult to catch them when they run straight off a ship and root into the soil of a new planet.</p><p>A harvest ship has brought Vertles to Centauri-12, and has signaled the nearest Starcorps ship for help. Lehnsherr takes one look at the situation and immediately orders everyone—officers included—to grab a spade and start digging. “We’ll replant them in the spare greenhouse for now,” Lehnsherr says. “They can be shipped to a Vertle depository when we’re back in Sol orbit.”</p><p>“They’re kind of cute,” Charles says, poking one in the stomach. It giggles and swats at him.</p><p>“There’s nothing cute about what they can do to an ecosystem,” Lehnsherr says coldly. And Charles… has had it. He wants to see Lehnsherr ruffled. Literally, but also figuratively—he wants to see Lehnsherr out of his depth, floundering, the way he’d made Charles feel, the way he still makes Charles feel every now and then when he impresses him, when Charles tries <em>so hard </em>not to like him and then—</p><p>“Come on,” he says, “you’re telling me that you’re staring down a field of Vertles, and you don’t find a single one of them cute?” It’s just the two of them still on the ship. Lehnsherr is gearing up to go down and start digging himself, which Charles respects. “Who hurt you? Why are you like this?” he hazards, taking the risk that Lehnsherr won’t have him court-martialed for insubordination.</p><p>“Why am I <em>like this?” </em>Lehnsherr asks, not angry but baffled.</p><p>Charles holds up a Vertle in Lehnsherr’s face. It coos and reaches for him. “Come on, admit it. Even that ice-cold heart of yours is melting. Admit it. <em>Admit it.”</em></p><p>“What are you, five?” Lehnsherr asks, and it’s the most human response Charles has gotten from him yet. Charles tosses the Vertle at him, which squeals as it arcs through the air. Lehnsherr catches it, but barely, looking at Charles with thinly-suppressed shock.</p><p>“When was the last time you joked around with anyone?” Charles says, shocked at his own daring. “When was the last time you actually had fun on a Starcorps mission? We have the greatest job in the galaxy, Captain. And you treat it like—like—it’s the worst kind of duty.”</p><p>Lehnsherr stares at him, the Vertle still squeaking in his hand. And then he storms out.</p><p>Well. Charles isn’t dead yet, so he counts that as a success.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
After that—</p><p>After that, Charles tries informality. Not the kind of informality that he’d started with on the <em>Magneto</em>, not the kind that relaxes any regs. Just—little things. He drops by the Captain’s office to ask him whether he wants to go to lunch. (Lehnsherr stares at him like a deer in the headlights and swiftly returns to his holomaps.) He starts bringing tea to the other officers. (He suspects they’re all coffee-drinkers, given the way the tea goes mostly untouched, but he keeps bringing tea anyway. Coffee is the devil’s brew.) He makes a joke about the starlight glinting off of Lehnsherr’s shined boots and blinding him and doesn’t get killed.</p><p>He runs across Lehnsherr once in the gym. Charles does fifteen full-body press-ups before breakfast every morning to maintain muscle tone, and then maybe some work with weights. Lehnsherr is—</p><p>Lehnsherr is covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and he’s boxing with the speed bag. His hands are wrapped and encased in gloves, his footwork is fine as he darts and dances out of the way of its swings, he’s sweating through the white vest he’s wearing and his eyes are focused and intent on the bag in a way that sends shivers down Charles’s spine. He finishes his own workout and—loses time, he thinks, captivated by the way Lehnsherr moves. Finally, Lehnsherr turns and seems to notice him.</p><p>“What are you looking at?” Lehnsherr growls.</p><p>Anyway, after <em>that</em> they end up in bed.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Lehnsherr traces a fine filigree of touch across Charles’s ribs. It tickles. Charles sighs and his breath brushes Lehnsherr’s hair, lifts a few curls lightly like a passing breeze. He looks good like this, naked but for his boxer-briefs, his hair no longer slicked back in exact accordance with regulation but sweat-matted to his forehead. Lehnsherr has curly reddish hair. Who knew?</p><p>“You should get cleaned up,” he says after a long moment. “You’ve got… come all over you.”</p><p>Charles snorts. “And whose fault is that, Captain?”</p><p>“Erik,” Lehnsherr—<em>Erik</em>—says. Charles blinks, his entire view of the world re-orienting around this infuriating man and his name, tossed out so faux-casually, but with so much weight behind it. As far as he knows, <em>no one </em>else on the ship deigns to call him <em>Erik. </em>“If we’re going to be… doing this, you should call me Erik. <em>In private,” </em>he adds forbiddingly.</p><p>“Are we going to be… doing this?” Charles asks, nonplussed.</p><p>Erik shrugs. Without his uniform, Charles can see the self-consciousness in the tilt of his shoulders. “If you want to.”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>“Well… good,” Erik says, and says nothing about wanting Charles, too, which makes him a prick, which Charles should not find adorable but <em>does, </em>somehow.</p><p>Charles pushes himself up the bed, watching Erik with unaccountable—is that fondness? surely not—as Erik stands and stretches and starts searching for his workout clothes, which Charles knows are hiding behind the washroom door where he’d tossed them earlier in his rush to get Lehnsherr—<em>Erik</em>—into his bed. Charles yawns. “Better set your alarm if you want to snag a little rest before we’re expected on the bridge,” he advises. “The Captain’s a real hard-arse about that kind of thing.”</p><p>Erik—honest-to-god <em>flushes </em>and sits down on the bed next to where Charles’s legs are sprawled. “I’m sorry,” he says, in a stiff, quiet voice.</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“I’m sorry about—how I treated you that first day. You really <em>should </em>wear the regulation uniform, you know, but… I was upset. I’d just found out I was getting a new XO.”</p><p>“Normally that’d be cause for a handshake and some light banter, not a dressing-down in front of our subordinates,” Charles points out.</p><p>Erik snorts. “We both know you’re here to make sure I don’t put a toe out of line,” he says, and Charles opens his mouth to protest, but Erik barrels on, “and I don’t blame you for it, anyway. It’s just… you showed up on <em>my </em>bridge, ready to read me the riot act about rules, and you weren’t even <em>dressed</em> correctly.” Erik has too much self-discipline to have something so venal as a tell, but he stares fixedly at where his fingers are interlaced in his lap as he says, “You’re not the only one waiting for me to screw up, you know. <em>You </em>might not use your insubordinate attire to get me kicked out of Starcorps, but some of the other people watching me… won’t be so lenient. So I need to be a hard-ass. I need to make sure every one of you is dressed correctly, and addresses me with the proper protocol, and follows discipline to the letter. Even though it makes me… unlikable.”</p><p>“I’m not waiting for you to screw up,” Charles says, shocked enough that that’s the only thing he can latch onto.</p><p>Erik snorts. “No. You’re Frost’s spy, and she’s actually pulling for me. There are others, though, who would like nothing so much as to see me relieved of command. Whether it’s for something as silly and trumped-up as a uniform violation or… something else.”</p><p><em>Wild card, </em>Charles thinks. <em>Violating the Prime Directive. </em>He wonders when he started to find that… strangely captivating instead of horrific. He lays a hand on Erik’s, and slowly, Erik turns to look at him, a question in his eyes.</p><p>“Why did you do it?” Charles asks softly, knowing that Erik will know what he means.</p><p>Erik stands abruptly and tugs his workout clothes out from behind the washroom door. In a flash, he’s dressed, his hair still mussed but workout-mussed, not sex-mussed. “Lieutenant,” he says blankly, “I’ll see you on the bridge,” and then he’s gone, and Charles is staring after him, hand still outstretched, cursing himself for falling into bed with the most <em>difficult </em>bloody person he could have ever attempted to fuck. And knowing that he’s going to do it again.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Captain Lehnsherr and XO Xavier quarrel over whether the tolerances of the warp drive are fit enough to make it back to Sol-3 to restation. Erik and Charles fuck in a supply closet.</p><p>Captain Lehnsherr and XO Xavier snarl at each other over whether the manual for hailing post-warp pre-contact species is outdated and xenophobic. Charles sucks Erik’s dick so thoroughly his eyes roll back in his head.</p><p>Captain Lehnsherr and XO Xavier, it’s recorded in the ship’s log, butt heads about a secret still and speakeasy in engineering. What really happens is that Charles tries frantically to seduce Erik’s attention away as McCoy and Summers put up the distilling equipment, but Erik stops in the middle of the hallway, stares at him, says, “You’re no good at subterfuge, Charles,” and walks on past the jugs of alcohol and the ensigns frozen in terror because as it turns out, not even a captain whose career depends on him sticking to the rules would dare mess with long shipside tradition of the engineering speakeasies.</p><p>Captain Lehnsherr and XO Xavier snipe over who accidentally let the red-flowering Vertle escape from containment, meaning that it now flounces happily around the ship in spite of the fact there is no soil for it to root into, looking cute and mascot-y. Erik catches it in his ungloved hands and lets Charles pet its flowers where it sits in his cupped hands, the little fist of buds cooing and purring at the gentle touch.</p><p>(Charles knows it was Erik who left the cargo door unlatched, but he’ll never tell a soul, certainly not the sour-faced inspectors that showed up citing reports of a “Vertle infestation,” a ridiculously trumped-up charge to make for one wayward walking plant.)</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Erik wakes up screaming and when Charles instinctively smooths a hand against his temple to soothe him, lashes out, grasps hold of Charles’s wrist and drags it down until he’s pinned on the bed between them. When Erik comes back to himself, he apologizes, and it sounds like he’s apologizing for more than the faint shadow of a bruise on Charles’s wrist.</p><p>“I can help you,” Charles tries. “My telepathy—”</p><p>“That’s not what you’re here for,” Erik snarls.</p><p>“I know, but—I <em>want </em>to. Erik, why won’t you let me—”</p><p>Erik takes a deep, steadying breath, and says flatly, “The gold standard for evidence at a USSA court martial is telepathic. For four weeks, Admiral Frost combed through my head, plucking out every thought I’d ever had regarding the situation, every possibly relevant moment in my entire life, and held it up to a spotlight. Things from my childhood. Things I’d forgotten. Things I’d never known in the first place. The time I was watching Magda Gurzsky’s hair instead of paying attention to a lecture about the Prime Directive. She went as gently as she could, but there’s no <em>gentle </em>when everything you are is being dissected and laid out on a slide for the perusal of strangers. I still get migraines.” He could leave. Even without his telepathy, frozen as it is in his head, flinching from this use he never knew that it could be put to, that one day the USSA might <em>ask </em>him to put it to the way they’d asked Frost, Charles knows that Erik thinks about leaving. Instead, he rubs apologetically at Charles’s wrist and turns over in bed. “Go back to sleep, Charles,” he says gruffly, and buries his face in the pillow and pretends to snore.</p><p>Erik doesn’t snore.</p><p>There are still so many things Charles doesn’t know.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
And then Leonis-8, where he learns all of them.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
They’re on a long, slow orbit through the Draconis star systems. There’s a small colony of Mystiqians on the dark side of Leonis-8, and they stop by to refuel, make sure that everything is fine. It’s at the very edges of Alliance space; far-flung enough that they won’t have heard the stories about the <em>USSAS Magneto </em>and its captain. The closer they get to Draconis, the looser Erik’s shoulders get, and Charles smiles. He still doesn’t know the full story, but he knows that shame weighs on Erik like an albatross around his neck, and speaking to people who don’t know about the fall of Erik Lehnsherr will only be all the better for him.</p><p>Everything is not fine.</p><p>Leonis-6 is occupied by a non-Alliance species, the Frigellans. They’re excluded because they haven’t developed Faster Than Light yet; but, Erik murmurs to him when they see the construction sites on the poles of the planet, they’re also known for being internally bloodthirsty, and might even be the rare race that’s excluded when they gain FTL travel and seek Federation approval. Another war, then, Charles had said, and Erik had said nothing but stared at the massive sprawl of cranes and steel with a complex expression on his face as they had watched the Mystiqian children play from where they’d docked in the capital city, changing into each other, into trees, into the native fauna, into whatever their childlike, boundless imaginations could conceive of. </p><p>Erik is authorized to make contact, as the only USSA ship in signalable space to a civilian population about to be contacted by a non-Alliance species. Erik is <em>obligated </em>to make contact, Charles points out. Simple communication isn’t breaking the Prime Directive, though this may be as close to it as any regular captain gets, speaking with a non-Alliance species. And if he has a reasonable fear of behalf of the nearby civilians, it’s not just his duty but his privilege to allay those fears.</p><p>Erik goes steadily greener as he points all of this out, but nods stiffly and walks to the intercom. Their ship is stealthed in airspace above the Frigellan colony. Charles grasps his sleeve. The bridge has been dismissed except for the two of them, which is unusual; inasmuch as there is a standard procedure for this kind of thing, it’s to show the entire Starcorps crew blinking and glimmering in the background of the communications holo, a show of unity, of force, even. “What are you afraid of?” he hisses at Erik.</p><p>Erik looks at him palely. “The last time I did one of these… it didn’t go well,” he says faintly, and before Charles can press on that, can ask how a simple First Contact spiraled into <em>violating the Prime Directive, </em>he’s at the intercom, decloaking the ship. The colony below them lights up with radio and wireless communication signals as a ship appears in the air above.</p><p>“Greetings,” Erik says, not a crack of fear in his voice, not a sign that he’s sweating like he is. “I am Captain Erik Lehnsherr, with the United Solar System Alliance, seeking contact with planetary authorities.”</p><p>Charles watches him, unaccountably nervous and unaccountably proud, as Erik initiates the standard protocol for First Contact with a species about to explode onto the intergalactic stage. He hopes it goes well.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
It doesn’t go well.</p><p>He finds Erik later, sitting on his bunk. Staring at his hands. Charles has never been in the captain’s quarters—they always fuck in Charles’s room, which, despite being smaller, is close to the engine room and therefore insulated from sound. Charles rolls up to the edge of his bed, a little stunned himself.</p><p>“They’ll kill them,” Erik says faintly.</p><p>“You don’t know that,” Charles protests. The cursing and the terror rolling back in the Frigellans’ eyes when Erik had informed them that the planet they were colonizing was already occupied and peace expected doesn’t bode well, but why borrow trouble?</p><p>Erik hands him a holopad. Charles stares with horror at the missile bases—who builds <em>missile bases </em>as one of their first auxiliary resources in a new habitation—captured with the imaging at the belly of the <em>Magneto. </em>There are two bases, or one and a half, really—the nuclear shit, that dirty, polluting, primitive weaponry is kept off-site, which is the first sign of higher reasoning Charles has seen from the Frigellans all day—and all of the missiles are pointing northward, poised to arc over the planet’s pole and impact the Mystiqian settlement. “Fuck,” he snarls. “The <em>Magneto</em>’s not rated for combat—do we even have any weapons onboard?—”</p><p>Erik quirks a humorless smile. “We could open the warp drive and set ourselves on a collision course with the planetary core.”</p><p>“This is no time for jokes,” Charles snaps.</p><p>“I’m not,” Erik says flatly. “They stripped the <em>Magneto </em>of her weapons when they court-martialled me.” He laughs bitterly. “Not that I can blame them. Not that they’ll regret it.”</p><p>“The nearest ship—”</p><p>“Is two jump-points away.” Half a day, maybe. “Those missiles are primed to fire in less than two hours.” He shrugs. “I called it in anyway. Made the requisite threats of mass retaliation. For all the good it’ll do the Mystiqians.”</p><p>“They’re still ready to declare war on the Alliance?! They just found out we exist!”</p><p>“Some peoples are just like that,” Erik says, which comes dangerously close to species-baiting treason. Charles elbows him. He knows Erik better than that, or at least he thinks he does. “And there won’t be a war. It was another group of Mystiqians, you know.”</p><p>“I—what?” Charles stops running his hand through his hair, nonplussed.</p><p>“It’s not surprising. Mystiqians are hardy. They like the desert planets, the ice planets, the outskirts of civilization. But that means they get into scraps more often. They hailed the <em>Magneto</em>. They’d made contact with a new civ and were concerned. Surveillance had increased. The society—the Capsarians—they wanted to treat them as citizens. Regulate them. But their sexual politics were repressive, and you know how Mystiqians feel about that.” Charles nodded. Raven was Mystiqian, and was possibly the only woman on campus who’d slept with more cadets than Charles. He rather thought, in spite of the way that Erik didn’t get along with anyone, not even Charles, that she and Erik would have gotten along. “I contacted the Capsarians. I saw the warning signs. I asked the Mystiqians to evacuate. They wouldn’t. I asked the Alliance for backup, or at least leave to engage. They wanted to wait and see.”</p><p>Charles has a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach about what is going to come next. “Erik,” he says, half a question, half a plea. Erik turns his head slightly toward Charles where he’s sitting by the bed, like a moon turning its face toward the sun. “Erik.”</p><p>“I waited until I couldn’t any longer,” Erik says distantly. “I waited until they had armies prepared to march on the Mystiqians. I waited until they issued the ultimatum: assimilate into the burgeoning empire or be destroyed. And then I lowered the plasma cannons and told them if they didn’t stand down the full force of the Alliance would come down on them.”</p><p>Charles’s breath catches. It’s—it’s a violation of the Prime Directive, yes—but—but a <em>genocide. </em>That’s what Erik is talking about, genocide, trying to prevent an entire people from being systematically slaughtered. “They court-martialled you because you prevented a genocide?”</p><p>“They court-martialled me,” Erik says, “because I failed to prevent a genocide.”</p><p>Oh no. Oh <em>no.</em></p><p>“What—” Charles chokes out.</p><p>“They called my bluff,” Erik says simply. “The Capsarians told me that if I had the Alliance behind me, I wouldn’t be a single ship trying to stop them. And they slaughtered them. All of them. Every one. We fought, of course. We killed some of them. But it was pointless.” He smiles, a terrible slash of a smile. “Most of my crew got relieved of duty. I was allowed to retain command of the <em>Magneto, </em>with a brand new crew, a new XO, and very close eyes making sure that I never even came close to violating the Prime Directive again.” He laughs. “And then they sent me to this <em>fucking </em>quadrant.”</p><p>“But Erik—” Charles says, bile rising in his throat, more pressing issues on his mind than the sheer <em>unfairness </em>of it all, “those missiles—we have less than two hours, you said. And no one’s coming.”</p><p>“No one’s coming,” Erik agrees hollowly.</p><p>“Evacuation—”</p><p>“No time, no resources,” Erik says.</p><p>“Well—we have to fight them anyway!”</p><p>“With what? Our ship with no weapons?” Erik laughs again, an even more desperate and broken sound than before. “As I was told at my court-martial, we swear not to the greatest good, not to the arbitrator of our morality, but to the Prime Directive. Because when we don’t keep to it, it doesn’t fucking <em>matter. They all die anyway. </em>At least we sail away with honor.”</p><p>“No,” Charles says sharply. “No, I don’t accept that. Erik—Erik, no one will ever tell you this, but <em>you did the right thing. </em>It’s not about ends, okay? It’s not about ends, and it’s not about means, it’s about what the last thing those people down there see, and whether it’s the Alliance protecting them to the very end. It’s about whether we are <em>better </em>than the cold desolation of space, than aloneness.” He takes Erik’s hand. “Erik. Erik. I—”</p><p><em>I love you</em>. Erik’s sleep-mussed hair as he blinks awake slowly. Erik’s smirk over naked chess, where the stakes are a secret for each piece. Erik’s tender touch on the leaves of a Vertle. This, even. The secret that has tormented Erik for as long as Charles has known him, that he watched a whole people die and was helpless to stop it, and the <em>pain </em>that caused him, the way Erik feels so deeply, so irrevocably, the way he blames himself. But declarations of love are not what Erik needs to hear.</p><p>“I will follow you,” Charles says instead. “Until the very end. Whatever you decide. Because I <em>know </em>that you will choose the right thing, in the end. I know.”</p><p>He releases Erik’s hand and wheels out of his room, returns to the bridge, where he stares at the holomaps and blinking displays alone. He pulls up the image Erik had been looking at, the missiles pointed at the Mystiqian settlements, ready to fly, and waits. Waits for his Captain to tell him what to do.</p><p>And then the intercom comes on.</p><p>“As of the end of this broadcast, XO Xavier is in charge of this ship,” Captain Lehnsherr declares. “You will start planetary evacuation procedures immediately aboard the <em>Magneto</em> and leave at 1430 hours, standard time. I will not be joining you. Do not wait for me. Do not follow me.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Charles snarls, and pulls up the feed for Erik’s room. It’s already empty.</p><p>McCoy sticks his head into the bridge room, a questioning expression on his face. Charles massages his temples. “You heard the Captain,” he snaps. “Get Summers to broadcast a planetary evacuation signal from the capital city, radiating outward. We’ve got to get as many Mystiqians as we can onboard and every moment you stand there listening to me instead of <em>doing it </em>is a moment wasted—” Blessed Jupiter, Hank turns and runs. Charles hits the button to call the rest of the crew back to the deck, and starts searching through the holo-feeds. That stupid fucking idiot. What the hell is he planning to do, one man against an army?</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Charles has never actually asked what Erik’s mutation was. Not out of a lack of curiosity, but because Erik is so strict about the crew not using their mutations—which is a fair although annoying rule, given the way the communications officer can blow a hole in the side of the hull at any time with his cosmic plasma rays—that much of the time it’s easy to… forget. If he had to guess, he would say technopath-class. Maybe telekinetic. Anyone that controlled has <em>learned </em>control, painstakingly and precisely, over the years. It’s one thing to say that you’ll never step a toe out of line of USSA regulation again, and another one to actually memorize the rulebook and <em>do </em>it.</p><p>Erik Lehnsherr, he learns that day, is an omega-level magnetopath. So as it turns out… he can do quite a lot.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
They don’t manage to evacuate the planet. They do manage to hold out until the <em>USSAS Britain </em>hops to their location, a huge cruiser-class ship that is made for evacuations like this one. Charles dawdles long after the deadline Erik gave them, their ship with no weapons, floating like a flying target over the capital city, but no missiles hit them, and he watches the explosions on the feeds like fireworks, trying to pick out the shape of one man in the midst of them, failing, watching the dust rise up and praying, praying that the explosions won’t stop.</p><p>When the last Mystiqian is onboard the <em>Britain, </em>it lifts into the air. The captain, Braddock, comms over. “Now or never, Xavier. Let’s get the hell out of here.”</p><p>Charles—hesitates.</p><p>“Hang on,” he says to Braddock, and over Braddock’s sputtering—<em>’Hang on?!’ What the hell</em>—he reaches for the Captain’s intercom and says,</p><p>“I am going to be returning for Captain Lehnsherr on an air scooter. The moment he is no longer engaged with the Frigellans, we can expect enemy fire. Anyone not willing to risk their lives is free to transfer to the <em>Britain </em>now. Anyone willing to stay—keep the airdock open and hold at two.B points over the capital city. We’ll see you soon.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Everyone stays. Every refugee, every engineer, every cadet, every officer stays for their hard-ass of a captain and the sacrifices he made to prevent another genocide from happening.</p><p><em>I love you, </em>Charles had thought, but he is beginning to realize—he is not the only one.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
Sand kicks up in his eyes the moment he encroaches on Frigellan territory. Leonis-8 is a dust bowl of a planet—god knows why anyone would want to make their permanent home here, let alone fight for it—he sets the comm to scatter-chatter and catches phrases flying too fast for the universal translator to decrypt. The tones of panic are unmistakable, though. Someone has torn through their defenses, is wreaking havoc on their great weapons of mass destruction. Charles grits his teeth and flies faster, faster, as the translator decodes: <em>Backup—two squadrons incoming—hold—the goddamn line—</em></p><p>Here is something that no one, except maybe Erik, who has read his file from back to front along with every member of his crew, knows about him—Charles used to race air scooters at the Starcorps Academy. The high-altitude wind whipping through his air, his hands on the accelerator pushing the machine higher, further, faster—”danger slut,” Raven had called him, and maybe it was true. “Air scooter” is a misnomer. They’re built more like terrestrial motorcycles than scooters—all purring speed and muscular design and the reckless vibration of being a hairsbreadth from death. They careen through HALO range, and at the edge between high-altitude and low-orbit you can see the curvature of the planet. Charles keeps one hand steady on the accelerator and one hand flicking through the holomaps—at twelve kilo, fifteen kilo, twenty kilo above. You don’t need legs to fly an air scooter.</p><p>He crests the ridge of a polar mountain and angles in for the descent. The world blurs around him as he slows, deceleration pressing him back into his seat until he feels like the world is crashing down around him. He has a course plotted to take him .25 kilo above the base. Now just to get there in one piece.</p><p>At the edge of the world, it is very quiet.</p><p>And then the great rushing of noise as he returns to reality—</p><p>“Charles?!” Erik screams. He’s standing in the center of chaos. Everywhere around him, dust and rubble and intact missiles—good, the fissile material is unstable—but no way to launch them, no way to calculate the impact. He’s torn through their computer drives and support apparatuses like a bullet, a highly concentrated force of pure destruction. “What the <em>fuck </em>are you doing here?!”</p><p>“Saving you!” Charles shouts back. “The way you saved them!”</p><p>“Get the <em>fuck </em>out of here!”</p><p>“Not without you!” <em>I love you</em>, he thinks, or maybe projects, because Erik stares at him, unblinking, bullets shattering off the shield he’s erected around himself, metal bullets splattering outward when they hit the boundary of the shield like so many malleable lumps of clay. “You arsehole, don’t make me hover here all day.”</p><p>Erik hesitates just for a moment, but a small contingent of Frigellan soldiers approaches, and they’ve got something on their shoulders—good god, is that a <em>grenade </em>launcher—and Erik, for the first time in his godforsaken life, decides discretion is the better part of valor and <em>runs </em>for it, freehanding the rope ladder Charles has dropped down and squirming into the cockpit. Sweat pours down his forehead, the result of literally hours of smashing the Frigellan defense force into so much fine detritus, and he has never looked more beautiful.</p><p>“Well?” he snarls, before he’s even got his safety belt put on. “Drive!”</p><p>“At your leave, Captain,” Charles says snappily, and takes them up into low orbit, leaving the Frigellans and their ruined military base and their genocidal notions and their anger and their fear and the horror of what they might have done—behind.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>
And much later—</p><p>Erik is fidgeting.</p><p>It’s the first thing Charles can see when he wheels into the green room. It makes Charles smile. Erik has no tells—except when he’s about to face down his superior officers. Erik himself is sitting stone-still, staring at his folded hands in front of him, but Charles can feel the buzz at the back of his mind that indicates a mutant is consciously activating his ability, and sure enough, when he looks close enough, there’s a paper clip at Erik’s elbow twisting and untwisting into odd shapes. Charles smiles at him, comes close enough to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Relax,” he says gently. “Or you might break the medal when they hand it to you.”</p><p>Erik grunts. “They should give it to you,” he says roughly. “I was ready to fly away. You’re the one who convinced me.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t have,” Charles says confidently. They’ve had this conversation many times before, in bed, and then over the long nights planetside during Erik’s <em>second </em>court martial in as many years, and it always ends up the same way, with Erik huffing, <em>Well, we’ll never know, will we, </em>and squeezing Charles’s hand, lest Charles think that he’s <em>not </em>grateful for the way he pushed him into intervening. But Charles knows. Charles knows <em>Erik</em>, and he knows that all he really did that day was run a very tightly managed evacuation and rescue Erik from a horde of angry Frigellans on the back of an air scooter. Not bad, but also not the type of thing they give Intergalactic Peace Medallions for. Unlike Erik’s intervention. Unlike Erik’s <em>heroism. </em>“Come on, Captain. Receive your reward.”</p><p>Erik opens his mouth, probably to make noises about being given a <em>reward </em>for preventing genocide, and Charles kisses him quiet. He savors the taste of Erik, the faint metallic tang he’d never been able to place until he’d seen him lift a building by its girders and slam it into the earth again, the brush of his dry lips against Charles’s own. When he pulls back, Erik blinks once, slowly, and then smiles a little shyly. “Was that my reward?”</p><p>“One of them,” Charles promises, and Erik’s eyes darken. But then the lights flicker on and off, indicating that the ceremony has begun, and Charles goes regretfully out to take his place with the rest of the crew in the audience to watch their captain finally, <em>finally, </em>be honored for putting into practice what everyone but the oldest and most conservative of the Alliance had suspected, but could never say: that a people might be more important than a principle, no matter how great.</p><p>There are speeches, and the medal is very large and very shiny, and Erik stands there, unsmiling, but Charles can’t help but notice how much better valor suits him than disgrace. But what Charles remembers most is Admiral Frost coming to find him in the party afterward, as he mingles with the members of the crew and the Alliance higher-ups. She waits for Summers and McCoy to flee, tails between their legs, at a glance for her, before she turns her gaze on Charles. She looks as beautiful and remote as ever, and is as unsmiling as Erik. “This is <em>not,” </em>she says, “what I had in mind when I assigned you to the <em>USSAS Magneto.</em>”</p><p>Charles smiles and takes a sip of his sparkling Neptunian champagne. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind, either,” he says.</p><p>“And yet somehow,” Frost says, as though he’d hardly spoken, “the charm of this last mission has… rubbed off on you. I’ve gotten the call from Central Command.” She thrusts a holopad forward, hardly waits for him to put down the champagne flute to take it. “Yours, if you want it.”</p><p>It’s… a ship.</p><p>It’s a <em>beautiful </em>ship. Not yet named, but a Vision-class cruiser, all sleek lines and huge science bay. A crew of 400, and some of the most exciting missions in the universe—Vision-class are reserved for discovery/exploration, pushing out the borders of Alliance space, making First Contact often and paving the way for the diplomatic corps. It’s his dream, laid out in holographic lines in front of him. He swallows.</p><p>“What about Erik?” he asks.</p><p>Frost raises an eyebrow. “<em>Erik,” </em>she repeats, forbiddingly, and Charles meets her eye, because he knows the best thing to do when you’ve given up more than you expected to a predator is to stand your ground and not give up anything else. “<em>Captain Lehnsherr’s </em>disgrace has been stricken off the record. There will be no one, formally or informally, trying to get him removed from Starcorps. But he’s still a loose cannon. They’re talking about sending him on pirate patrol. Guarding merchant shipments, that sort of thing.” Charles’s stomach drops. Erik is a <em>magnificent </em>Captain, should be leading discovery missions himself, or—all right, maybe not diplomatic missions. Pirate Patrol is one step up from the sentrywork they’d been doing all year. He’ll get to fight, which ought to appeal to him, but not much else.</p><p>“I have no doubt,” Frost adds almost gently, as though she knows what Charles is thinking, “that he’ll manage to get into quite enough trouble even so.”</p><p>Which is—fair. Charles quirks a smile. “Do you know him?”</p><p>“Not well,” Frost says. “I was on secondment at the Academy when he was a student there. He was brilliant, but a troublemaker.” She looks at Charles closely. “Not very much unlike you.” Charles gives her his most charming, brilliant grin. She quirks something that almost, in the right light, could be a smile.</p><p>“Thank you,” Charles says sincerely. “For the opportunity. For the consideration. But—” he hands the holopad back to Frost, “I think I’ll stay on with the<em> Magneto </em>a little longer.”</p><p>Frost looks—taken aback. “Really.”</p><p>“Really,” Charles says warmly. “I think… I could use some more experience before I take command of a ship myself. And I can think of no one better to learn from than Captain Lehnsherr.”</p><p>Frost studies him, then nods, crisp and sharp. She stows the holo into her purse, then favors him with the faintest of smiles. “All right, Lieutenant Xavier. I’ll see your record is updated. At any time when you want off the <em>Magneto</em>, <em>your</em> ship will be waiting.”</p><p>Charles nods. <em>His </em>ship. The words still give him a thrill. But not as much as the way Erik wanders over, his expression carefully nonchalant, the medal around his neck luminous and highly reflective. “What did Frost want?” he asks, playing at indifference.</p><p><em>I love you, </em>Charles thinks. He still hasn’t said it. He will, some day, when Erik’s career or the lives of an entire race aren’t on the line, but that day hasn’t come yet. “She wanted to congratulate me,” Charles tells him, “on what a glorious job I’ve done of keeping you in line,” and Erik laughs, a sharp bark of amusement, and Charles smiles as the cadets and officers around them turn, astonished. Erik hands him a fresh flute of Neptunian champagne. Erik’s smile, around his own glass, sparkles—a universe of mystery around it. He could spend the next decade discovering and exploring that smile. Charles feels dizzy. </p><p>“Come on,” Erik says, “let’s dance,” and he takes the handles of Charles’s wheelchair in his sure, firm grip. Charles, almost by accident, glances up. The stars shimmer overhead.</p><p>Ancients used to believe you could predict the future with astrology. Charles doesn’t need a divination tool to see his own path, laid out and glittering, the stars ahead of him and Erik’s sure grip on the handles of his chair, his heat radiating out beside him, like a small star, like a life-giving, loving sun.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For Cherik Week 2020. Thanks <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion">lavenderlotion</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame">flightinflame</a>, who championed this fic at every stage of the way.</p><p>Ask me inappropriate questions at <a href="https://midrashic.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>. If you like my work and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee. And join us on the <a href="https://discord.gg/m7Qx95n/">X-Men X-Traordinaire discord</a>.</p><p>My comment policy boils down to one thing: <b>Please comment.</b> You. Yes, you in particular. If you would like examples, a simple heart emoji or “+kudos” now that the multiple kudos function has been disabled are hugely appreciated. Your comment does not have to be profound. Your comment does not have to be long. If all you have the energy for is the heart emoji, i appreciate that much more than a kudos or a bookmark. A kudos is not interchangeable with a short comment that says “great job!” or something similar. I always respond to comments. If you feel like your comments mean less than those from people I regularly interact with, you’re wrong; comments mean more from a stranger. I would prefer a “please update” to no comment. I would prefer a short comment to no comment. I would prefer criticism to no comment. Comments keep writers writing and in the fandoms you love. <b>Please comment.</b></p></blockquote></div></div>
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